Realistic game graphics

[Vaya]

are we any close to this? when will it be possible to create a game with super realistic graphics, what's holding them back, graphic power for rendering, I've seen graphic illustrations that can trick you into thinking that its a real photo, but not a game.. yet.

what's the most realistic game to date? assassin's creed 3 looked so realistic when connor's face is hidden and only his suit and the environment are showing, what other games that are same/more realistic?

[inky]

Final Fantasy, The Last of Us, and Metal Gear generally have superb graphics.

[omier]

It's not just the graphics that are keeping games far away from reality. It's more about the way those graphics are displayed to the player and the way the player interacts with the game. As far as taking graphics closer to reality, we have to get rid of polygons. Maybe people should actually try to change the way things are rendered, or change how the computer works. There's gotta be more ways for computing out there. It also bothers me that the computer screen is a flat rectangle. It completely disregards the fact that a human's field of view is pretty large and forces game designers to fit stuff into the small space that is the screen for 1st person games. Stuff that normally wouldn't be there, such as guns in fps games. The thing I find very stupid is that in a lot of fps games, when your character takes damage, he/she just starts bleeding from the eyes. That's definitely a step away from realism. Also, your character has the collisions of a rounded cilinder instead of having real legs and hands. But that's held back by the way you control the character as you can't really move your character's legs yourself. There is a lot more.

Anyways, I can't really talk about great graphics since nothing new runs on high settings for me. The GPU is my main problem.

But Unreal 4 is looking pretty good. Lots of games are to make use of that soon.

Spoiler!

[Mirosuke]

My mind doesn't assimilate those graphics as real yet, sadly. :/

[Bartic]

It's not just the graphics that are keeping games far away from reality. It's more about the way those graphics are displayed to the player and the way the player interacts with the game. As far as taking graphics closer to reality, we have to get rid of polygons. Maybe people should actually try to change the way things are rendered, or change how the computer works. There's gotta be more ways for computing out there. It also bothers me that the computer screen is a flat rectangle. It completely disregards the fact that a human's field of view is pretty large and forces game designers to fit stuff into the small space that is the screen for 1st person games. Stuff that normally wouldn't be there, such as guns in fps games. The thing I find very stupid is that in a lot of fps games, when your character takes damage, he/she just starts bleeding from the eyes. That's definitely a step away from realism. Also, your character has the collisions of a rounded cilinder instead of having real legs and hands. But that's held back by the way you control the character as you can't really move your character's legs yourself. There is a lot more.

Anyways, I can't really talk about great graphics since nothing new runs on high settings for me. The GPU is my main problem.

But Unreal 4 is looking pretty good. Lots of games are to make use of that soon.

Spoiler!

The first video... It look very realistic, apart from non-realistic physics. Those stones falling down... I mean, the shattering of those stones doesn't look realistic at all.

[poehalcho]

currently the thing that is holding us back is the so called uncanny valley.
We can basically make things that look very human, but they don't act like it properly: movements aren't refined enough, facial expressions, etc. It causes the human to actually perceive them as repulsive and less human. That's why the characters in old games seem strangely more human than they do in modern games. (look at for instance the humans in the SC:(bw)'s graphics. There is something incredibly human about them even thoug htey don't look it. It's due to the fact that the uncanny valley effect hasn't kicked in yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

[Love]

I say a bit over 10 years, less than 20 til we reach the point where developers can add all they want in as much detail as they want.

[The Invisible]

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-uncanny-valley

That episode is worth the watch.

As the appearance of a robot (or a character) is made more human, a human observer's emotional response to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.[8]
This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley.

[Bartic]

Lol @ Vaya's new avatar.

[Toshiharu]

project cars

You need an insane amount of resources to recreate real life. There's just so much going on that you need to do. Having high res textures is nothing like that

[LillDev!l]

Computer parts have a limit as to how 'small' they can be made as well. So we'll have to be seeing bigger cpu's / gpu's after some time. Right now they're generally making cpu's faster using just as much space. But once features on a chip get under 9nm they'll leak through the body of the chip itself. We still have some space to improve on for now, but that won't last us to long either.

The unreal graphic's look nice. But surely not life like indeed.

[Aventus]

I don't think companies really have the time or money to create lifelike games. Think about the effort you would have to put into something as simple as a character running on dirt. you'd have to have fluid interaction between the shoe and the dirt and rocks being kicked up and mud flying but it couldn't be just brown chunks it would have to have so much texture I can't say it would be a financially good idea.

tl;dr I don't think we will have the technology or time or money to make games look real for quite a long time.


Edit: Although I do think we could be close when it comes to scifi games because they can create there own physics for those types of games because they are scifi. You wouldn't have to focus on certain things that you normally would in a "realistic" earthbound game.

[omier]

^A tl;dr wasn't really necessary lol. Don't underestimate the reader.

[Aventus]

I put it in there for the people like vegeta of the boards, don't want to stress out the hampsters brain.

[omier]

Ah ok, got to consider everyone.

[Vaya]

I remember when I first played Warcraft the campaign cinematics where breathtaking to me, at that time the game graphics itself wasn't any good not because they can't do it, but because they put limitations for the the rendering speed so that mid-level PCs would still get a decent fps.



And btw Aventus 15 year ago you'd say the same about the current game graphics details.

[CrimsonNuker]

Project Cars is definitely on my list.
Although it doesn't necessarily have mind blowing graphics, the facial imitation in LA Noire is definitely a stepping stone for all games.

Final Fantasy doe.

If it's anything like FFXIII, that gameplay footage is alpha quality.
If this game comes out for PS4 instead of PS3, I'm actually going to cry.

[MrTwilliger]

1 simple reason: money.

[Toshiharu]

1 simple reason: money.

Not really. Mainly it's hardware. There would be a company out there that would make a game that blows the rest out the water in terms of graphics. Witcher 2, Project Cars, heavily modded Crysis+GTA4 and so on come to mind. GTA4 is a cheat though. It's just pictures rather than 'reality' and none of those come close to being realistic.

[MrTwilliger]

Games with 'real life' graphics would cost more to make, limit the target market to people who can afford the pricey high-end hardware needed to run it and when you consider an AAA game costs as much money now as it did 10-15 years ago (I remember buying games for my PS1 for $100, same price as a new AAA PC game now), the profit margins would be severely cut. If a big budget, AAA game isn't going to make the profits they require then the game simply wont be made. I really doubt this is something a indie developer could do either.

Now don't get me started on how piracy affects the equation as well.

Simply put, AAA games are made to make money. Getting such a high level of graphics will draw money out of other areas of development, such as the actual game play itself which is never good for sales. Less projected sales = no game.

All hypothetical blah blah blah.

[Aventus]

Are we talking ultra realistic like real life or like hd tv.

[Ahoy]

Maybe in future?

[omier]

Are we talking ultra realistic like real life or like hd tv.

HD TV has nothing to do with realism.

[Gaigemasta]

Pretty good IMO - GTA4, cheats my ass...dat lighting

Spoiler!

[Vaya]

I'm having hard time trying to convince my brain that this isn't real :o

[TheDrop]

BF3 looks ridiculously real to me, uncharted 3 as well (but its a little more cartoonish lookin)

[omier]

Pretty good IMO - GTA4, cheats my ass...dat lighting

Spoiler!

When you start looking around the image, you'll find some stuff that gives it away, but at first glance it's like a photo. Original GTA4 graphics are nowhere near that.

[CrimsonNuker]

Yeah the mods for GTA4 are mind blowing, it's truely a shame Rockstar couldn't maximize the PC potential.

[Toshiharu]

Games with 'real life' graphics would cost more to make, limit the target market to people who can afford the pricey high-end hardware needed to run it and when you consider an AAA game costs as much money now as it did 10-15 years ago (I remember buying games for my PS1 for $100, same price as a new AAA PC game now), the profit margins would be severely cut. If a big budget, AAA game isn't going to make the profits they require then the game simply wont be made. I really doubt this is something a indie developer could do either.

Now don't get me started on how piracy affects the equation as well.

Simply put, AAA games are made to make money. Getting such a high level of graphics will draw money out of other areas of development, such as the actual game play itself which is never good for sales. Less projected sales = no game.

All hypothetical blah blah blah.

See Witcher 2 and Project Cars. Both small budget studios that manage to create[ing] "AAA" title that's better than the so called today's "AAA" title. In terms of graphics. Also Witcher 2 was pirated x amount of times of what they sold. Still was a profitable product and google Witcher 3 in what they plan on doing.

It's just management is better at those companies over for example EA, Ubisoft, and Rockstar. However Rockstar makes a product that is insanely expensive in dev cost, but it still has a return unlike the other two where they attempt to play it safe and still lose. Weird industry isn't it?

It also costs money to optimize your game to run on lower end machines. You have a lot of time factored into it. Whereas if we had an insane amount of computing power than you could have an object with a million polys without worries. It's easier to make a model and not give a shit about efficiency vs getting the smallest amount of polys without it looking blocky.

It can go both ways as of now and 'realistic' games.